Posted
by
kdawsonon Tuesday August 11, 2009 @02:41PM
from the bragging-rights dept.

necro81 writes "General Motors, emerging from bankruptcy, today announced that its upcoming plug-in hybrid vehicle, the Volt, will have an EPA rating of 230 mpg for city driving (about 98 km/L). The unprecedented rating, the first in triple digits, is the result of a new (draft) methodology for calculating the 'gas' mileage for vehicles that operate primarily or extensively on electricity. The Volt, due out late next year, can drive approximately 40 miles on its Li-Ion battery pack, after which a gasoline engine kicks in to provide additional electricity to charge the battery. Running off the gasoline engine yields approximately 50 mpg. Of course, the devil's in the details, because the conversion of grid-based electricity to gasoline-mileage is imprecise." Now we know the meaning of the mysterious "230" viral marketing campaign.

should be available by 2010 according to this morning news.I'll be buying one as well.My RT commute is ~24 miles. I can charge at work. Free gas anyone?

Not having to charge at home means just a little more in my pocket each month. Since this will be replacing no vehicle (I'll keep my truck thankyouverymuch) I doubt it'll pay for its self simply on saved fuel, but maybe it will. I burn ~550 gallons of mid-grade fuel per year just on my commute. At $3/gallon that's $1650/year. Assuming the car lasts 10 years I'll save $16K just on not paying for commute fuel. Any other driving I do with it will still be more efficient than my pickup (at 11Mpg).-nB

Assuming the car lasts 10 years I'll save $16K just on not paying for commute fuel.

Factor in battery replacements. Unless GM has also made a lifespan breakthrough in Li-Ion battery technology, so that you can use the same battery pack for 10 years of harsh all-conditions charging and discharging.

Still, my daily commute (on the same order as yours) would also be mostly on-battery. This would save a lot of gasoline.

You also got to consider the likelihood that as full or majority electric power cars start to become popular, you're going to see governments at the state, local and federal level attempting to make up for lost tax revenues. I'm not sure how they'll manage to differentiate between power for transport and power for home/business use, but if there's one thing that the government is good at it's figuring out new and inventive ways to tax people.
Suffice it to say, driving one of these, especially on a short commute, will really save money, as well as the environment, but don't count on power being (as) cheap for long if we see a lot of these types of cars take to the streets.

You are also going to see metered parking lot outlets. (These are already used in places like Fairbanks Alaska for headbolt heaters).

There is no free lunch, and there is no work place recharging stations for 99.9999% of workers. The fact that NetworkBoy found one is 1) a miracle, 2) short lived, 3) bound to be usurped by his boss.

So NetworkBoy will end up paying the full recharge bill and will have to charge at home. Still not so bad.

But, IF this vehicle ever became popular we will have another crisis on our hands. The electrical grid probably can't handle the load, even in off peak hours, let alone in high-demand hours. And while you wait 15 years to get another nuclear power station permitted you will be keeping the coal fired plant up all night.

Just about all coal generation plants are Clean Coal plants these days, but the definition of "clean" keeps changing. The juice has to come from somewhere, and scrubbed coal plants may be cleaner than the exhaust of millions of vehicles, but it is by no means a Free Lunch.

So advocates need to temper their glee with a little reality check until they can hang enough solar panels on their roofs to charge their cars.

The juice has to come from somewhere, and scrubbed coal plants may be cleaner than the exhaust of millions of vehicles, but it is by no means a Free Lunch.

So advocates need to temper their glee with a little reality check until they can hang enough solar panels on their roofs to charge their cars.

After we've already agreed that even the worst case (coal power) is better than ICEs and made the obvious statement that there's no such thing as a free lunch, I see absolutely no reason to temper my glee. I am very gleeful at getting something much better than what we have.

I don't get where this comes from:1) Assume EV fan thinks they are completely perfect and do not harm the environment in any way ever.2) Point out the obvious that this strawman is untrue.3) Tell EV fan to stop being happy or advocating their solution.

I mean there may be some wackos out there who really believe (1), but none of them are around here, so who are you talking to?

No, the people who blythely say things, like, "Finally, zero-emissions transportation I can afford!" are disengenuous in the extreme. Because most of them do (sort of) know that they're burning a trainload of coal

So... they know it, you know it, I know it... Apparently everyone knows it, but it's still disengenuous to say something completely true -- the car is zero emission -- because apparently someone might not know that this doesn't mean there's no pollution involved ever even though everyone actually knows exactly what is meant.

Got it.

And of course they get to have a chuckle at the poor fools who can't personally afford to buy a new vehicle chock full of toxic batteries, but who none the less are subsidizing Mr. Cool Green's purchase by having several thousand dollars of his tax dollars pushed over onto them. So progressive to make lower middle class people who can't play the same game help buy your car for you.

And how the hell do you expect the "poor" (and lol, I know actual poor people, "lower middle class" isn't poor sorry) to ever be able to afford any of this stuff in nobody buys it, both to reduce production cost and to introduce these cars into the used market? Subsidies are there to actually make these cars (well not the Volt but e.g. Civic Hybrid) affordable to even to the lower middle class. Maybe if you hadn't bought that shiny new Explorer as soon as gas dropped below $4, you'd be able to take advantage of the incentives yourself.

People on a forum like this should be exactly the ones to universally downplay developments like this, because when they wax poetic about their coal-powered car, they're contributing to a larger conversation in the wider culture that generally picks up on the "zero emissions" part and doesn't have a clue about the reality of burning those fossile fuels on the other end of the grid.

No. Absolutely not. Because this development IS a huge improvement. That is not debatable. You can babble about toxic batteries (cluephone: The whole LiIon battery pack is vastly, vastly less toxic than the Lead-acid battery in your smog emitter) and coal power (which still ends up being vastly superior in terms of emissions) all you want, fact is this is a great development. Only the retarded -- or the retarded by choice -- would want to downplay a positive development.

But I'm glad to see that you're concerned about hypothetical retards who don't read slashdot. Even though I've seen semi-literates on non-slashdot spout the same stuff about how EVs don't do anything because it just moves the pollution to the power plant. Who are these people who don't know coal plants burn coal exactly? Because even the dumbest people I can think of know that. In fact, the only case I can think of where what you claim happens actually happened was when you pretended someone else didn't know that when they said "zero emissions" even though you knew that wasn't the case and they actually knew it. Made-up people are not a good argument.

In any case, at best that means be realistic about what you're claiming an EV accomplishes. It does not mean that this development should be downplayed. Because it's a good development. Say otherwise, and demonstrate ignorance or disingenuity.

When it comes to actually reducing emissions, cars like this are lost in the noise, compared to just using more insulation in the attics of older houses, or replacing the windows on older commercial structures. But that's SO not cool, compared to talking about a vehicle that has built-in MiFi, and so it goes un-talked-about.

It's not noise, vehicle emissions are a huge problem, but yes those are great ideas. Great ideas I've heard a thousand times, anyone who is buying a new house, getting work done on their house, building a new office building, or otherwise will hear about a lot. I've heard it on Fox News segments about saving energy -- "upgrade your insulation, buy new windows!" So yeah, surpr

FWIW without divulging my employer...We currently have 4 charging stations, configured for both EV1/2 (carryover) style paddle chargers, and with 110V20A & 208V20A available. we have 3 people using homebrew EVs that charge there in the fair weather months. When I was having power issues on my old diesel Merc I used the open slot to run a charger and block heater during the winter. (two bum glow plugs and a bum cylinder)...

Anyway, I talked to building management a while back about if I built an EV that

Utility officials have already stated that even during peak hours they have the capacity to cope with even several years worth of increases in the number of electric cars. During off-peak hours, the issue isn't even there.

"Utility officials have already stated"? Oh yeah, that's comforting. Are these the same "utility officials" who mismanaged the power grid in CA so badly a few years back that we had rolling blackouts all summer?

Factor in battery replacements. Unless GM has also made a lifespan breakthrough in Li-Ion battery technology, so that you can use the same battery pack for 10 years of harsh all-conditions charging and discharging.

Actually, you don't have to factor in battery replacements because GM is supplying the Volt with a 10 year 150,000 mile warranty on the Li batteries.

Its already been proven that the Government won't let anything happen to GM. Plus, GM has the best balance sheet in the industry because of it's bankruptcy. Have you seen any other automaker's debt-ratio lately?

Factor in battery replacements. Unless GM has also made a lifespan breakthrough in Li-Ion battery technology, so that you can use the same battery pack for 10 years of harsh all-conditions charging and discharging.

Actually, you don't have to factor in battery replacements because GM is supplying the Volt with a 10 year 150,000 mile warranty on the Li batteries.

Doesn't this just shift the burden of pollution and disposal to a different party? The net effect is unchanged. Li-Ion batteries use a lot things that aren't good for the environment and a lot of energy to do so. Someone else is using more energy so you can use less. Net of zero.

The amount of effort going into making passenger cars more efficient is absurd. Passenger cars are already a miracle of modern engineering in terms of efficiency and pollution. While we try to squeeze the last 3-5% of possible gains out of the system we are simultaneously almost completely ignoring the major polluter on the road. Legacy diesel engines are, by far, the worst offender in terms of pollution of the type that actually hurts people directly (smog, particulate, etc).

1) "A lot of things that aren't good for the environment"? Name one. Here's a rough recipe for your typical LiP cell. 1) Lithium carbonate (as found in mineral water); 2) Phosphoric acid (as found in soft drinks) 3) Iron powder; 4) Sugar (regular old sucrose, burned to make the cathode's carbon binding); 5) Graphite or amorphous carbon (for the anode); 6) A porous polyethylene membrane; 6) One of several typically nontoxic electrolytes (BYD's pres likes to show off by drinking his company's electrolyte); 7) casing, wiring, etc.

Which of those do you have a problem with? The only reason you can't throw traditional (laptop-style) li-ions in the trash is because of the cobalt and the fire hazard. LiPs and manganese spinels (what almost all EV makers are using, with the notable exception of Tesla) have neither. Plus, they're all setting up systems for their packs to be recycled -- not because of either any particular value to the raw materials nor any significant environmental consequences to their disposal, but to assuage the fears of people like you.

2) "Give me a TDI motor any day": Oh please. Even the cleanest commercial diesels, like the Jetta TDI, can barely meet modern US emissions regs. Show me a single SULEV diesel. Heck, have they even managed to make a commercial LEV diesel yet? Diesels emit less CO2 than gas cars, sure. But EVs emit less CO2 *and* less of every other pollutant except PM. And, the pollution that they do emit is displaced, no longer at street level in crowded areas, but at altitude and generally in less population dense areas.

Plus, that's on our current grid. Electricity is getting cleaner (42% of new capacity added to the grid last year was wind, and most of the rest, natural gas), while oil is getting dirtier (increasing share of syncrude and high-energy sources as the easy-to-get stuff gets used up -- think Athabasca bitumen)

Still, at some point the battery is going to need replacement when it's out of warranty.

Why? No, seriously, *why*? Why is there this huge insistence that EV battery packs are somehow inherently going to die before the rest of the car? You've got good odds of your transmission dying in an ICE car before it meets the scrapheap, yet people act like EV and hybrid battery packs somehow *must* all die before the car does.

Ever heard of the Baker Electric? Jay Leno has one from the early 1900s. It still runs on its original nickel-iron batteries. Companies pick battery chemistries, sizes, arrangements, cooling, depth of discharge, etc in order to best meet the need of the product they're making it for. Laptops aren't expected to be used for much more than a few years, so battery packs for them are optimized more for capacity, reduced weight, reduced volume, etc. That's why your laptop pack dies after a few years. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about LiP or manganese spinel cells. These have ten times the longevity of your typical laptop or cell phone battery. GM isn't warrantying their pack for ten years for the fun of it.

Look at the Prius. For God's sake, even many first-gen Prius *taxis* are still operating on their original packs. By all standards, the pack will outlive the car for most owners. That's what you get with a sizable, low-DoD, cooled NiMH pack in typical hybrid driving conditions. We're not talking about high-DoD lead-acid or cobalt/graphite li-ion (excepting, in the latter case, Tesla -- and even then, they've done some major tricks to up lifespan). We're talking about far more stable packs than that.

Where does this myth that the batteries are fundamentally going to have to be replaced come from?

And *even if they do have to be replaced*, you're talking about battery prices *ten years from today*, not today's prices. Look at how much the Prius's NiMH pack fell in price. I'd be surprised if a Volt pack replacement ten years from now costs any more than a transmission replacement does today.

And what's to say that electricity prices won't jump up dramatically with people suddenly charging their cars on the grid every day?
Also, assuming that a GM car will last for 10 years, particularly a first-generation plug-in hybrid, is a pretty tall order.

Second, Simple economics say, that if this car will do this, the demand for gas will be less, therefore, gas prices go down... Economics 101

You forgot the second part of Econ 101: supply. The SUPPLY of gasoline was pretty much always fixed,and it's always going down. That means that price will generally trend upwards. Now this little care might have SOME negative impact on demand for gas, but not likely enough to counteract dwindling supply, much less offset the INCREASED demand generated in the world economy by a growing population, and a higher percentage of the population starting to drive in developing nations.

It's not that my commute is 35 miles -- one-way. It's that four months out of the year the outside temperature averages 30ÂF during my commute.
That's currently (no pun intended) the major drawback to a fully electric commute, because I'm certain that running an electric heater to keep warm will kill the car's driving range.

But it could just idle the gas engine to generate heat. It should consume very little gas to idle the engine, and if there's one thing ICEs are good at doing with high efficiency, it's generating heat.

...why do these stories about hybrids, fully-electrics, etc. always elicit responses like "but it freezes here, which kills performance" and "but I drive 200 miles every day, will it be able to do that? No."

I don't hear anybody ranting on the Mini for not being able to support a soccer (hockey?) mom with her 3 kids+entourage+equipment.I don't hear anybody complaining that a Ford Excursion is crap up in northern Alaska because the tires keep sinking into the thawing dirt roads.Who last complained about a Scuderia Spider (open top car) because they lived in Seattle and, well, dur?

Not every single car is going to fill your specific needs and desires; thank goodness, then, that there is a wide range to choose from.. and with the Volt and other initiatives, those whose desires include having a non-gasoline car to drive short distances regularly in non-extreme (4 months of freezing is extreme enough, tyvm) weather will be having that choice available to them, just as you have had the choice between a myriad of cars that will happily run with little performance loss at 30F and the heater blasting at full.

Your car uses lead-acid batteries. These are a completely different chemistry than managense spinel/amorphous carbon cells (like the Volt uses), which are in turn completely different from the LiCoO2/graphite cells your laptop and cell phone uses (to poor lifespan), which are again in turn a completely different chemistry than the NiMHs that the Prius uses (to excellent lifespan).

Your argument is like claiming that because a piece of cotton cord burns at a certain rate, so should a piece of det cord. After all, they're both cord, right?

Wondering how much current is required to charge though - if you charge at work, where they expect you to do no more than plug in the block heater, would it be easy to trip the breaker with several cars charging? Here's a market for a time-sliced plugin octopus.

Free gas - the economics of free imply people will use it until it's not so free. If you can always get free charging, maybe everyone will drive more and you have gridlock everywhere. On the other hand, free charging might mean mobile homes on electricity rather than little gas misers. Park your home at work and never leave! Free LAND!

i hope you're right. i suspect that your company would frown upon filling your tank. That would be an awesome benefit though. "We offer competitive salaries and free recharging of electric cars and plug-in hybrids."

More likely, there would first be an effort to prevent such charging, followed by charging stations that require payment. Followed by a spike in electricity prices.

Heh. i'm just the far seeing visionary in the marketing dept. If you want actual solutions, we'll need you to talk with our Engineers.

__

Hmm, let's go for it!

Well, maybe it could be sockets in lamp posts or posts between the concrete dividers in the lot. Or better yet, have trellises that cover the parking lot. They support planters that provide shade to the lot and maybe clean up the air a bit. Add some solar panels here and there. Have power cords dangling from the posts.

Maybe some kind of induction system, if there is a way to do it safely. The network knows that it's ok to charge your car when it senses an RFID. The panel under the asphalt charges your car by induction.

I bought a $1500 Yamaha TW-200( http://yamaha-motor.ca/products/products.php?model=2916&class=13&group=M [yamaha-motor.ca]|&LANG=en ) few years back for going into the bush. It has since become my primary vehicle in good weather.The bike gets 95MPG and has been around unchanged for over 20 years, so parts are abundant. I now have 2 of them just because I can, paid 900$ for the second. Scooters went up in price to the point of arrogance but small dual sport bikes have stayed reasonable. People need to stop driving

Screw the motorcycle. Drive a $1000 shittermobile. It's pretty easy to buy one that gets 30 mpg. Drive it for a year or two and either junk it, or sell it for a couple hundred dollars. You'll never approach the efficiency of that compared to buying any new car, hybrid or not as there will be no new manufacturing required.

Yes, because comparing a Volt to a motorcycle makes a ton of sense and isn't at all a strawman. Why not compare it with riding the bus, or getting on a bike? The guy has a car, he's in the market for a new car, and he's getting the Volt. Please compare within those parameters. Most compacts start in the teens these days, so the gas savings he's quoting start to make sense around a midrange, reasonably priced new car. This is not a loss, and that's one way to look at them.

By saying he should get a motorcycle you might as well say "New cars are a joke, they are a loss no matter how you look at them" because your argument could easily be used there as well. Of course, thats not at all the point of the discussion, so I don't see how your point is at all relevant.

It's not vaporware once public betas are available for evaluation. The "vapor" part implies it doesn't exist at all, not that it just hasn't released yet. The beta can reveal a product to be vapor, if the product in the beta doesn't match the features of the pre-beta hype. But that just means the pre-beta hyped product was vapor. The crappy beta product is real.

I think this applies both for software production and for the Chevy Volt.

Maybe Chevrolet's engineers are just insisting on being thorough and working the bugs out BEFORE release... which is a concept too many software engineers seem to have forgotten? That fleet of 50 "beta" Volt cars that's been on the road wasn't just for advertising, ya know.

The Tesla uses electricity for both. It sounds inefficient, but compared to the power draw for moving the vehicle, it's a drop in the bucket.

Best part is, you'll be able to sit in your Volt in the parking lot and nap with the A/C or the heat running, and yet the engine can be off until it needs to start in order to charge the batteries back up. (which would probably be many hours later if you started with full batteries)

Have you actually driven a hybrid? They shut off the air to conserve power and reduce petrol consumption.

Are you sure? I drove a Prius last week, and I didn't notice that. I did notice that when I had the A/C on my MPG was much lower (e.g. 28MPG instead of 50MPG), and that the engine stayed on more often, but I never saw the A/C automaticallly shut itself off. That would be a strange thing for it to do, since it would be contradicting the user's wishes.

You dont know the alternative. If the AC is off then he has the windows open. If the windows are open, especially on the expressway, then the car has more drag. What's the loss then? I doubt the alternative to AC is sitting in the car with the windows closed for "the environment." Regardless, this guy owns a prius so even with the AC blasting he's doing better than 90% of the people out there.

1) Driver MUST push dash-mounted button to engage "Economy" mode. This mode is sticky between driving sessions.2) Engine MUST be somewhat warm. My temp gauge doesn't have units, but it needs at least four bars.3) The car has come to a halt for a couple seconds and you haven't engaged in behavior that the car thinks is stop-and-go.

When the engine is shut off, the air conditioner doesn't run, simply because the compressor is belt-driven, which

If you have the cheddar to drop $40k on a commuter car, you probably don't think twice about the price at the pump. Let's hope there are enough people buying this for the novelty value that it will stay afloat long enough that production efficiency can improve to the $25k/unit level.

Sorry, but buying any new car is the opposite of being green. A lot of polluting resources go into manufacturing a new car. If you want to be green, you (in order) move to within walking distance of work, take a bus/train, or get a fuel-efficient used (already manufactured) car.

I would just like to point out that I'm sick of the American auto industry treating us Canadians and the rest of the metric world like second class citizens. You in the US all enjoy your wonderfully efficient 230 mpg, whereas we are stuck with only 98km/L, less than half!! For shame.

I plan to start a boycott until this terrible treatment of the metric world halts.

GM already makes a plethora of small diesel powered cars, just not for the US market. European Opels/Vauxhalls aren't bad at all. As I've said before, my 7 passenger 2008 Vauxhall Zafira 1.9 CDTi would get 35-40mpg (US)when fully loaded on a road trip. That's better than most econoboxes are advertised at here. As an American, I was disgusted that I couldn't legally own that car in the US. Adding insult to injury was seeing all the GM logos on the windows.

Side note: GM has released the Opel/Vauxhall Astra in the US as the Saturn Astra. However, they made it suck by putting the worst engines and transmissions in it and giving it practically no options.

I'm not sure why people are hating on this car so much other than the fact that it's GM and everyone is mad at them for the whole bailout thing right now.

The only real difference between this car and previous hybrids is that this one will go 40 (maybe, I'm guessing closer to 30) miles before it kicks into hyrbid mode.

This car is a great concept and for the vast majority of people I know, will provide essentially gas-less lifestyles (except on road trips, but if you're taking THIS little thing on a road trip, you did something else wrong). And if you need to go 70 miles instead of 40 in one day, you spend what?.75 gallons? You're going to complain about that?

This is the kind of technology that can break the oil companies hold on the auto industry. yet people continue to bitch about how it's not good enough for them. I say fuck you all and I hope other companies follow in this car's footsteps. All technology has to start somewhere and this is the first version of a gas-free car to hit the market. Give it a few years and we'll be seeing cars that go 60 miles on one charge, then 100, then maybe even more. Give it time, stop bitching and appreciate how far we have come, not how much you still want to happen.

That is NOT the only real difference. The biggest difference here is that there is NO variable timed engine. No cam lobes. No transmission. Just a gas powered electric generator. There is NO hybrid mode. This vehicle operators only on power from the batteries. When you take it over a certain speed, the generator kicks on to keep the batteries juiced. This decouples the generator from the power source. Also, it's not a little car. It's a 4 door sedan that gets 50 mpg on the highway.

I agree. This obviously isn't the ultimate alternative fuel vehicle, but this process has to start somewhere. Yes, it's expensive, yes it's hard to justify on pure economics at the current gas price of $3/gallon here in the US. But $3 gasoline isn't going to last forever. Last summer, before the economy crashed, we had $4.50 gas, and once the economy cycles back and demand for oil goes back up in the face of flat or declining world oil production, prices will likely climb even higher than that and the e

Amen. People need to accept that is a progression of technology and that things are not going to happen overnight.

I bought my 2002 Prius after a six month wait time. I paid more for it then a comparably equiped gas car. There was no economic rationale for my purchase -- I did it because I loved the car, and had the privilege of driving a cutting edge piece of engineering for going on seven years now, with minimum maintenance and hassle. There's something beautiful about driving with virtually no noise and I still smile when I roll up to a stop sign and the engine shuts off.

Moreover, I am willing to pay higher than market rate because of the externalities associated with having the world's first mass-produced electric car:

I am supporting an environmental technology that I believe in.

I am supporting green-tech projects, built in America.

I love driving on electric power only.

I am willing to take a risk on buying the Volt or the Prius or any other quasi-experimental first-generation piece of tech hardware because I have the money.

I am buying it because as a child I wanted to know why I couldn't put a windmill on top of the family car and use wind power to make it go.

I used the Toyota Corolla (regular, non-hybrid vehicle) as my comparison, since it's popular and similar in style. According to Toyota's website, it gets 26 miles per gallon in the city and starts at $15,350.

..[various assumptions]..

if you assume $4 per gallon, then you'd need to drive around 177,000 miles to break even.

Hard to understand why the writer didn't just compare it to another Hybrid. Ford's Hybrid Fusion I think is the most impressive Hybrid for what you get for your dollar and the performance of the vehicle (also doesn't feel like a tin can). It starts and $27,270 and is closer to the Volt. Heck the Camry would have been closer to the Volt. The two Stipulations as to why he picked the Corolla don't really seem to make sense when there are dozens of models that would have been a closer match.

The 230 figure is designed to account for how most people will drive the vehicle and uses a government standard test methodology. The important thing is that the same test is applied to all equivalent vehicles. Since 90% of people drive 40 or fewer miles in a day, it's not an unreasonable number if recharged as designed.

If you wanted a better figure of how it would last for a day's worth of driving you could take the total driven range and divide that out to get miles per gallon. Perhaps even quote it with a qualifier as something like 100MPG/300kWh to account for the electrical contribution (my figures are made up but you get the idea). This would allow to easily account for the cost of the electricity as well as the extended range from batteries and post battery range once you have drained the initial charge.

Regardless of how you interpret the results the car is impressive even if it is too expensive. Give it a few years and you should be able to get something like this for a lot less money. I've already talked over with my wife and we want to get a vehicle like this and solar panels on the roof in about three years when costs drop. I figure it should drop my monthly expenses a fair bit and be good for the environment.

I wish they would have kept to their original listing of "40 miles on a single charge, 50 MPG when running off the generator". The EPA needs to come up with some new measuring standard for this type of car, or some idiot is going to put one gallon of gas in his uncharged Volt for a 200 mile trip one day, and bitch and moan when he runs out of gas in the middle of nowhere after 50 miles.

I'd be worried that if all my runs were full-electric, that is to say that my 10 mile commute never required the car to dip into the gasoline, that without treatment, the gasoline could break down and gum up the injectors - like when you store a boat or mower over the winter...but who wants to drive around with a stabilizer-mix full time? that's gotta put a big hit on efficiency and power if you ever need the combustion engine to kick in.

i don't think i've ever seen that issue discussed when hybrids are brought up.

This is a great point; I wish I had mods points. While the issue could be kept to a minimum by keeping the gas tank small 4-5 gallons& keeping it between a quarter and half a tank a lot, but if you ran for a year without engaging the engine because all you drive is a few miles a day, you may have a serious problem. Most hybrids up to now this hasn't been an issue because they run their ICE a lot, with the Volt, it might start to become a problem.
Should be interesting to keep an eye on this topic.

Very weak. 40 miles on battery and then ~ 50mpg for the remaining 10 miles and you get the stupid mileage figure. Yes you can average 230mpg over the first 50 miles you drive on a fresh charge. Of course driving just another 10 miles would drop the mileage figure substantially. I guess it's time to have two mileage ratings. The first would be gallons per 100 miles with a fully charged battery, the 2nd would be gallons per 100 miles on a fully depleted battery.

Why are there so many haters on this car? If anyone thinks that this is the end all be all solution to the problem, they are freaking idiots. This is just the first volley across the bow of the PRACTICAL electric car idea. With mass production brings decreased costs and better technology over time. If all car companies waited until the technology were perfect before producing it, it would be another full decade before anything hits the market. Yes, GM has screwed up in the past, but don't hold that against them with this car. THIS IS A GOOD START.

But the GM exec's aren't counting that electricity he's using, only his actual gasoline used on occasional longer trips, towards the "Miles Per Gallon" rating. I guess GM thinks that people don't pay for their electricity, and that electricity doesn't come from power plants that burn fossil fuels too.

I honestly don't know, but the summary would suggest otherwise. Specifically:

Of course, the devil's in the details, because the conversion of grid-based electricity to gasoline-mileage is imprecise.

That strongly suggests they ARE accounting for the electricity. The question is, how? Just how "imprecise" is the conversion? I don't doubt that you are right to call BS but unraveling the BS won't be quite as simple as the objection you raised.

Miles per Newton (or whatever we can equate all fuels to)? (i have no idea)

The SI unit you might be looking for is Joule. Every form of energy can be brought back to Joule - be that electrical energy or chemical (potential) energy.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule [wikipedia.org]

As stated in the summary, that's the EPA's rating, not GM's rating. It comes from the same place as the MPG rating on your car right now. GM didn't calculate it, or come up with it. They are just quoting it.

And yes, it's a plug-in. (That's the point.) And that is for driving using the power from the grid. Power plants are much more efficient than the engines in cars, so I assume that's being worked into that somewhere.

That said: This is the first time the EPA has ever tried to rate a plug-in electric vehicle, and their rating system probably has a few bugs to work out...

It's sort of a bad example, because none of the brownouts at that time were caused by a lack of generator capacity; it was all caused by Enron and Reliant calling up their plants and telling them to call in sick for the day, causing spot prices for power to rise on account of lower supply, and calling their other plants and telling them to ship their capacity to Nevada, so they could (1) arbitrage cheap Nevada power into expensive California power and (2) sell transmission line capacity to themselves, causing the price of transmission capacity to go up and making the cost of piping the California poer to Nevada and back even more profitable.

Nissan said last week that its all-electric vehicle, the Leaf, which comes out in late 2010, would get 367 m.p.g., using the same E.P.A. standards.
so don't worry, the volt is already 137 mpg behind the competition

I'm supposed to believe that, in 2 years of hybrid development, you've developed a production vehicle that will get almost *5 TIMES* the gas mileage of Toyota's hybrid model (that they've been developing and improving on for over 12 years)?

No, you're supposed to read the summary at the very least and understand that it's talking about an EPA-established conversion from electricity usage to equivalent gasoline consumption for EVs. Regardless of the particulars of the method, it's no surprise that this number would be much higher for something running purely off an electric motor vs. the Prius which is using its ICE most of the time even for short trips.

So if a guy drives every day back and forth to work, less than 40 miles, he's only using the plug-in electricity. But the GM exec's aren't counting that electricity he's using, only his actual gasoline used on occasional longer trips, towards the "Miles Per Gallon" rating. I guess GM thinks that people don't pay for their electricity, and that electricity doesn't come from power plants that burn fossil fuels too.

According to GM, I guess if I never go on longer trips, my Volt will be getting infinity miles per gallon.

No, Smartiac, they are counting the electricity you use. The value is only for short trips that solely use electricity. It isn't infinity because they are in fact trying to account for that electricity, but put it in terms of the standard MPG. That conversion metric has a whole host of problems with it, but it isn't ludicrous on its face. EVs are extremely efficient, and power plant electricity generation is extremely efficient compared to the ICEs in automobiles. So whatever reasonable conversion you come up with, that's probably in the ballpark.

The MPG will be much lower for longer trips because there they actually have to burn actual gas. But even that is 50mpg (again using the EPA guidelines which aren't perfect for normal cars either).

They discuss the electricity consumption/cost in the article, and that the number is an estimate that's hard to calculate since many people will use the battery exclusively about 75% of the time.

I agree, it's hard to calculate to give both an accurate and realistic number. If you drive non stop until the car both runs out of electricity and petrol, then calculate distance/gallons then that's an accurate number. But is it realistic? This car isn't designed for the cross-country road-trip in mind, but even still it would get hybrid (or better) mileage due to charging over nights.

So what number do I care about? Driving cross country or day to day driving?

Similarly I could try driving my hybrid on the highway, flooring it the entire way and I wouldn't get the advertised numbers.

Granted, it would be nicer to know "how many bushels of coal are needed to charge it to capacity" and then try to find an analogy between bushels of coal -> gallons of diesel -> gallons of petrol. Then you can say those 40 miles required so much diesel, which is about so much petrol. Then again, the entire country doesn't use coal-burning-plants so even then it wouldn't be accurate.

The battery tech isnt here. Perhaps you can wish for faeries to power the car while youre at it because youre being 100% irrational.

Hell, even if you do this, you still need to convince the gas stations to switch over, because you'll sometimes be in a situation where you need power, now, not overnight. Early adopters appreciate a little convenience.

So its hype and a bogus test meant to exaggerate the car in best possible situations.

Or, for people who live in an optimal situation, say 20 miles from work with mostly in-city driving, it is as great as advertised.

I drive a TDI Golf. I get 45 MPG. But it's all high way, 80 miles a day. If I were driving stop light to stop light, my mileage would plummet. Diesels with a nice short final drive are the kings of the highway, but full electrics dominate on surface roads with lots of stop and go action.

Also, not sure on the Volt, but I believe Toyota offers a battery recycling plan that dramatic

> It's just like the people who drive "green" cars like the Prius. Do they not> realize that the car will only run for about 100,000 miles before they have> to replace some ridiculously expensive component? "But it's for the> environment!" they'll claim. So the majority of consumers in the USA are> concerned with "the environment" over their pocketbook? I think not...

Source please? Our neighbors purchased the first Prius in our metro area, and Toyota gave them a thank-you gift of a lifetime warranty so they have no incentive to under-report problems. Their Prius is around 120k and has had zero major maintenance required. Including batteries. That's pretty typical of Prius experience I have read about.

Electricity costs me $0.19 per KWH and it takes 10KWH to fully charge Volt's batteries, for a total of $1.90Gas around here is about $2.50/gallon, so a full charge is equivalent to 0.76 gallons of regular. Which means 52.6 mpg at my current gas and electricity costs. After the charge is exhausted, the car is rated for 50 mpg.

However, I live NJ, so our gas is cheap and electricity expensive. In other places the math might be drastically different.

I read somewhere that the method the EPA is currently using to measure mpg for these cars is to see how much fuel is consumed for 51 miles. What happens is the car runs on the batteries for 40 miles, then on gas for 11 miles. So, the average for all 51 miles was 230G, which means the total fuel consumed was approx.2217 Gallons. But,.2217 Gallons / 11 miles approx. = 49.62 MPG (when not running on the batteries).

If the EPA used any value less than or equal to 40 miles, the car would appear to get infinite